


a bright morning (tip of your tongue)

by capricornia



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Magic, Choking, Consensual Possession, Corruption, Dream Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Ghost Sex, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Dynamics, Trust Kink, and also non-consensual murder, murder with dubious consent, of a sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:16:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28829511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/pseuds/capricornia
Summary: “Did it feel good?” Chan wanted to know, and nothing could have prepared him for the way the muscles of Seungcheol’s arm tightened, for the way he stared into nothing with an intensity that sent a thrill of fear down Chan’s spine.Seungcheol’s eyes were like liquid, soft velvet, black holes sucking Chan in. He licked his lips, closed his eyes, and then raised his lids slowly as he let his mouth fall open, showing his teeth. “It was the best.”***This is what gets to Chan: Seungcheol is bad, and Chan is good.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Lee Chan | Dino
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair





	1. amphibianite and americans

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTRarePairFest2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  Seungcheol is a ghost. Chan keeps seeing him in his dreams. Feelings are had, and they escalate.
> 
> ***  
> 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Many thanks to the prompter for this one! It well and truly gave me brain worms. I ran away with it a little bit; I hope my prompter doesn't mind too much!
> 
> While this work is currently unfinished, it is fully planned-out. I will update the tags as chapters are added, but some of the big ones are in there right now, because I want to make sure readers are informed before they begin a story with elements that may squick them out.
> 
> Specifically: 
> 
> \- This fic contains scenes of Chan while he's underage. During this period in his life, there are NO sexual thoughts or intentions toward him from older characters. There *is* an age difference dynamic later, though, and Seungcheol has known Chan since he was a child. If this squicks you out, please take care and do not make yourself uncomfortable by reading this work.
> 
> \- There is one scene in a later chapter with autoerotic asphyxiation (choking) and one with regular (non-sexual) choking that lead to loss of consciousness for the character.
> 
> Credit where credit is due—the world building premise is taken from _The Lives of Christopher Chant_ , although you don’t have to know anything about that to fully enjoy this fic.
> 
> Many thanks as well to the friends who whose feedback I appreciate endlessly. You know who you are.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> Playlist: [can't take the hunger](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3wOCRj5Jnnf3MabgWsZmQr?si=dGwMu5vmS6GfaYc5Xptltw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it stayed in the little boundary they made for themselves, it was safe.
> 
> Teach me something? Chan asks him every so often, like he doesn’t have professors, like he doesn’t have a projected career path with the University, a path that likely includes apprehending people who behave like Seungcheol used to. 
> 
> And Seungcheol does.

_I really wish for you to see my dreams  
_ _I wish for us to be able to hurt together every hour_

— SEVENTEEN, “I Wish” (12B)  
  
  
  
Seungcheol is already waiting when Chan makes his way into the park. He’s standing by the slide in the little children’s playground, looking like—well, Chan doesn’t know many dads, but Seungcheol definitely looks like one. 

It’s eleven-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday, so there are no kids around the park. It’s just Seungcheol standing there, wearing his usual long brown coat with the two bullet holes in the front by his knees, with his black hair swept back. He looks like a glamorous rock star in the height of his fame; he looks as beautiful and untouchable as ever. 

Beautiful because he is bathed in the bright morning sunlight of Skokie, Illinois. Untouchable because he is slightly transparent, and there’s a bee buzzing around and through him.

He hurts Chan’s heart.

“Hey,” Chan calls as he stumbles over the uneven grass. The backpack he’s carrying off one shoulder makes him lean slightly to the side. He feels disoriented in the blue daylight of Skokie, and slightly personally affronted, like the time difference and the American-ness of everything have conspired against him, personally.

He reaches up to fix his glasses so he can watch Seungcheol’s gaze rake over him. The glasses are old, and have a slightly outdated prescription, so he mostly guesses at where Seungcheol’s eyes are and settles for watching the fuzzy line of his shoulders rise up like sound waves. Seungcheol is always pleased to see him.

“Hey,” Seungcheol says when Chan gets close enough to really see him. He looks at Chan like he’s worth looking at. It’s extremely gratifying, because Chan is wearing the same old clothes he’s been wearing every time for the last two years, and the shirt and pants are a little small. 

Seungcheol swats at the bee ineffectually. That’s one of the endearing things about Seungcheol: he always acts as if he’s physically there.

Chan smiles. “Ready?” he asks.

Seungcheol looks excited in a boyish sort of way. It’s cute. Chan holds out his hand, and Seungcheol offers his arm.

It doesn’t take very much effort for Chan to turn Seungcheol corporeal. He just holds his hand over Seungcheol’s arm right above his wrist in an approximation of a grip and wills him to come more fully into the same plane of existence as Chan. It feels like pulling a tissue from a box. Seungcheol never gets any warmer when Chan does this, only more solid. The bee passes through his leg once more, then leaves them alone. Seungcheol’s features fill in with shadows and color, and Chan grins up at him, looking sappy and stupid, and not caring about it one bit. 

It’s just them for a few moments longer. Chan glances around the park. They’re still alone. He stands on his tiptoes, wraps his arm around Seungcheol’s shoulders, and pecks Seungcheol’s cheek. “Missed you,” he whispers.

“You saw me three nights ago,” Seungcheol complains, but he’s smiling, and Chan knows, he _knows_ that Seungcheol looks forward to seeing him with a desperate, wild kind of hunger.

“Yeah,” he says. “And I missed you all today. Wonwoo hyung was going on and on and _on_ about Performative Speech, and I just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.”

Seungcheol leans against the side of the brown slide. His coat almost matches the color. Chan reaches out and hooks his fingers into the bullet holes. Seungcheol watches him, angles his body toward him like he’s being pulled.

In a way, he is.

“What were you thinking about instead?” Seungcheol asks him. He’s laughing as he says it, but even so, Chan has to fight back a small shudder that begins at the top of his spine and spreads out along his shoulders. He’s about to answer when someone calls out. Seungcheol jumps back, bumping his shoulder into the slide, and Chan’s fingers catch in the holes of his coat, arresting him in the middle of falling against the slide.

Chan doesn’t need to turn around to know it’s Wonwoo laughing at them. 

(Seungcheol’s hands. He was thinking about Seungcheol’s hands while Wonwoo was trying to study with him—his blunt fingers, his sturdy arms.)

“Where are all the kids?” Wonwoo asks as he trudges over the slightly-wet grass to the playground equipment. His shoes make no imprint; only his spirit is here, intangible as Seungcheol was before Chan turned him solid. “Oh, right,” he continues as he half-walks, half-floats toward them, “they’re right here.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes and laughs brightly as he rights himself. 

“They’re in school,” Chan says, ignoring Wonwoo’s comment about his and Seungcheol’s relative maturity. “It’s eleven in the morning here.”

“You did the math yourself?” Seungcheol teases him. 

It’s Chan’s turn to roll his eyes. Seungcheol _knows_ math wasn’t his strongest subject. Seungcheol had listened to him complain about trigonometry for a whole year back when Chan was in secondary school.

“The Professor told him,” Wonwoo guesses, and then he, too, holds up his arm. “Firm me up, please, Channie,” he says, and Chan sighs and walks over. His shoes, the only part of his outfit that fit, make ugly squelching noises in the grass.  
  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  
The plan is simple enough: purchase dragons’ blood. Figure out if the amphibianite substance recently found in the aftermath of a magically-induced explosion came from their new contact here, Johnny Suh, or, if not, whether he has any clues about where it did come from. Get the dragons’ blood back to the University. Leave.

Johnny Suh is a _character_. This is how Seungkwan, their team’s potions maker and healer contact, describes him. Chan describes him as _dangerous_. The University’s official files classify him as a _Magical Creatures dealer, 12C, First Class, Approved until January 2024_. 

Magical creatures—dragons, minks, pixies, black cats, bats, rats, herons, snakes—Johnny Suh has dealt with them all. His business is in the back of a PetSmart in Skokie, Illinois, Midwestern United Provinces of America, World 12C. First Class means he is allowed to deal with dragons, one of the most sacred and dangerous types of animals. Approved by the University on behalf of the Bureau of Enchantment of Korea until 1 January, 2024, approximately three years from now.

Chan doesn’t like him. 

He’s never liked Johnny Suh, ever since the team began keeping tabs on him, since Johnny began doing business with the University two years ago and Chan had to take notes while he met with the professors. He hadn’t really looked at Chan very closely, but Chan has the distinct impression that he remembers everyone he’s ever seen. 

“Seulgi said you guys need some dragons’ blood?” Johnny says, and scratches his head.

“Specifically, a Western Fire dragon, yes,” Wonwoo says.

Johnny Suh scratches his head a little bit more. 

Honestly, Chan is bored. The team has split up, and he’s stuck where he always is when they have to check up on people who will recognize him—inside the wall. Well, he’s not _stuck_. He can move around inside and through the wall at any time. But moving around too much will catch Johnny Suh’s attention and blow their cover, so here he is, standing, intangible, in the middle of the side wall, next to the tanks of geckos and iguanas and crickets, all of which make him uneasy, as he watches Wonwoo talk to Johnny Suh about Ms. Kang—Seulgi.

Ms. Kang is busy all the time, working as a trainer in some high-security government office. Like Seungkwan and Vernon, the most regular members of their little team, she isn’t a spirit-traveler. Unlike Seungkwan and Vernon, she’s from 12D, Chan’s and Wonwoo’s world. She works “behind the scenes,” which means she’s technically a donor to the University. Ms. Kang put the team in contact with Johnny Suh two months ago. The team has worked very carefully to present themselves to him as an independent corporation, neither contracting with the government nor on the wrong side of the law. Johnny hasn’t looked into their fake company history too hard, which is part of why Chan is suspicious.

“I’m almost out,” Johnny says. “Everyone wants dragons’ blood these days.”

It’s true. There’s a list in the office back at the University of illegal substances the team has been tracking: dragons’ blood, multiple species. Amphibianite, raw. Canary bones. Glowgrass, golden lemons, giants’ breath, new moon dew, dream juice. Put together, they paint a nice little picture of someone experimenting with some very powerful life magic. Or, as Seungcheol has theorized, some type of necromancy.

He would know. He’s a necromancer, or at least, he was thirty years ago.

Seungcheol walks in, right on time. He’s gotten a backpack from somewhere, probably stolen, and half his coat is tucked into the straps in a way that makes him look slightly scatterbrained. Chan knows that it’s to hide the bullet holes. He looks around timidly, like he’s never been here before, like he hasn’t spent the last four days snooping around invisibly. 

Ms. Kang is the one who got them in touch with Johnny, but Seungcheol is the one who got them all the information. Being a ghost means he can float through solid objects like they’re nothing and go pretty much anywhere in the Related Worlds without being seen.

He hangs out by the door like he’s waiting for Wonwoo to finish talking to Johnny. Wonwoo glances at him, looking for all the world like they don’t know each other. It’s a good trick.

Seungcheol looks at the tanks of geckos. The lights in the main part of the store are harsh, and they throw Seungcheol’s form halfway into silhouette. The whites of the lights streak his hair, and for a moment, Chan can imagine he’s as old as Professor Yoon is, instead of perpetually twenty-eight. He sees Seungcheol’s future, frozen on his face: his grey hair, the wrinkles around his eyes, his children, his reliefs and regrets. Would Chan ever have met him, if that had been his destiny? In some other world, would some other Chan look at Seungcheol’s lined face and see familiar tracks?

Then Seungcheol moves slightly to the left, and it’s gone. He’s just Seungcheol again: Chan’s Seungcheol, perfect and heart-breaking and real.

Seungcheol crosses his arms. Chan watches his gaze shift from amphibian to amphibian, then to the little iguana tank in front of Chan’s face. He catches Chan’s eye through the glass and winks ever so subtly.

Chan’s ears flush, and he ducks back into the wall as much as he can. 

The neat thing about being an enchanter is that he can do, as Vernon says, _very cool magic very easil_. The not so neat thing is that, unfortunately for him, other people can do magic, too, including Johnny. He can look through minor enchantments like invisibility, if he has enchantment vision—what the old Western textbooks call _witch sight_. So Chan has to stay inside the wall and wait for the others to be done so he can make the rest of the operation run smoothly.

But being inside the wall means he can observe Johnny Suh while Seungcheol and Wonwoo perform their little distraction.

“Excuse me,” Seungcheol says when there’s a lull in Wonwoo and Johnny’s conversation. “Sorry, forgive me,” he says to Wonwoo, “but I have an urgent question.” He turns back to Johnny. “Is there by any chance a way to get amphibianite here? I’m in desperate need of a cloak. Chameleon, if possible.”

He says it like he’s really in need, on the run from something. Amphibianite—the material made of the magically-treated shed skin of lizards and such—is highly expensive and highly regulated. Chan has only seen it once, in a glass case in Professor Yoon’s office. It can be made into all sorts of items, including clothing. Chameleon amphibianite can make it easier, with some magical prompting, to shift around one’s appearance. A nice item for a criminal to have. A nice item for Johnny Suh to carry, if he likes dealing with criminals.

Johnny frowns. “That’s a dangerous material,” he says, voice slow and measured despite Seungcheol’s frantic look. “That’s illegal in most places. If you have credentials, I can poke around and see if I can find some. But you gotta have the paperwork.” The way he talks makes it impossible for Chan to tell whether he’s being serious or if his words belie a different meaning.

Seungcheol looks disappointed. Disappointed and worried, a little terrified, with his big eyes open wide and his thick eyebrows pinched together. 

Chan wants to kiss him. 

He tenses inside the wall. It’s cold. He’s beginning to get a cramp in his right calf from staying still for so long.

“I’m really desperate,” Seungcheol says. “It’s about my kids.”

Johnny looks Seungcheol up and down. Chan clenches his hands into fists.

“I’m sorry.” Wonwoo says to Seungcheol, “I’m in the middle of a very important business transaction. I’m sure your children can wait.”

“They’re my _kids_ ,” Seungcheol says, doing a very good job of faking outrage. He looks like he’s just itching for a fight, ready to just smack Wonwoo upside the head at any moment. Wonwoo looks extremely put out in a professional sort of way. The white button-down and black tie he always wears when he’s spirit-traveling only add to that image.

“Look, please, just tell me where I can get some amphibianite,” Seungcheol says to Johnny. “My crazy ex-wife is—”

“There’s a place in England,” Wonwoo interrupts him shortly. “Norwich. Man by the name of David Casper.”

Seungcheol frowns at him doubtfully. This is the bait part of the plan: if Johnny Suh won’t tell on anyone, Wonwoo will.

“He’s right,” Johnny says, seemingly relieved. “You can contact him. Here, I’ll write down his website for you.” He takes out a piece of paper, scribbles on it, and hands it to Seungcheol. Seungcheol is careful not to let their hands touch. If Johnny feels that Seungcheol isn’t alive, the gig is up.

“There. Good luck with your children,” Wonwoo says. “Now, I would love to finally purchase some dragons’ blood.” 

Johnny gets out the paperwork for Wonwoo. Chan meets Seungcheol’s eyes again through the iguana tank and knows they’re both thinking the same thing: If Johnny Suh knows about David Casper, why didn’t he mention him in the first place? Why did he wait for Wonwoo to mention him? Does he think Casper is running an illegal operation on the side; was he waiting for the official, approved person to bring it up first? Or was he latching onto a convenient excuse in order to get them off his backs? Ms. Kang’s intel suggests Johnny as suspicious, but not necessarily on the wrong side of the law. 

Chan reaches up and pushes his bangs back against his head as he watches Wonwoo scribble on the forms. 

“It’ll come in installments,” Johnny says. “I have to wait for more shipments. That’ll be a down-payment of three grand for now, and then fifteen hundred per installment.” 

Chan tries not to groan. That means they’re going to have to come back here. 

Wonwoo gets out the credit card Chan gave him. Chan watches through the iguana tank as he slides it through the reader.

This is the easy part of the operation. Wonwoo carries out his carefully-wrapped dragons’ blood, and Seungcheol argues and pleads with Johnny some more, tries to get more information about Casper, while Chan comes out the other side of the wall to head to the back parking lot.

He walks back to the park, feeling useless. He’s done his part—firmed up Seungcheol and Wonwoo, gave Wonwoo the credit card, observed Johnny Suh. He can’t help them send the dragons’ blood back, not really. All he has are the potions Seungkwan made him.

“I’m just the post officer,” he mutters as he walks past the playground equipment. They’ve been in the PetSmart so long that the light has changed, and everything looks more real, somehow, now that the sun is muted behind the clouds. 

“Talking to yourself?” Seungcheol asks from behind him. He jumps.

“Hyung,” he accuses. “You scared me.”

Seungcheol laughs. “Boo.”

Chan rolls his eyes, and they walk together past the tennis courts to the little cluster of trees where the breach in the world is. Chan tries to cast his senses about to make sure there’s no one watching them. All he detects is Wonwoo, coming up to the trees from the opposite side. 

“Okay,” Chan says once they’re gathered together once more, “give me the packages.”

It’s a figure of speech. He can’t touch the dragons’ blood. He found that out early on, one of the first times he’d spirit-traveled, when he was seven years old or so. He’d found the skull of a bird in the woods in some world. When he’d touched it, everything had gone dark, and he’d thunked right back down into his own world, into his own bed.

Every enchanter has a fatal law, a sort of magical allergy. For some, it’s certain types of metal. Some can only do magic with one of their hands. Chan can’t touch dead material like blood and bones with his bare skin. Even wrapped in packages is cutting it close. So Wonwoo sets the dragons’ blood down on a tree stump, and Chan takes the potions from Seungkwan out of his backpack. 

New moon dew, glowgrass, boiled spider silk, pumice. Things to strengthen, things to turn from one substance to another. And dream juice, to blur the lines between dreams and reality just enough for Wonwoo to be able to take the packages back with him without injuring Chan in the process.

He opens the bottles and spits inside. The potion smells horrendous. He watches as it turns colors. Once it’s a bright, solid purple, he pours the potion on the packages, then waits until they turn transparent, like how Wonwoo was before Chan firmed him up. Now their essence is here, in World 12C, but some physical part of them is appearing in their world, 12D. Wonwoo takes the packages up one at a time. By the time Chan is done, Wonwoo is holding twelve parcels in his arms, and Chan can hardly see his face.

“Think it went well?” he asks.

Seungcheol nods. “We have a lead on Casper, sort of,” he says. “We’ll see what Seulgi says about him. You should ask her to get all the information she has on Johnny Suh, if it’s possible. Something isn’t right there, that much I know. But computers make everything so difficult; I can’t see his logs nearly as easily. He doesn’t leave his books open overnight like people used to.”

“Hmm,” Wonwoo says. “Chan?”

Chan shrugs. “We’ve taken his dragons’ blood,” he says, “so that’s good. Now criminals can’t get to it.”

“Hmm,” Wonwoo says again, then, “see you tomorrow.”

Chan gives him a nod. 

Wonwoo steps between two of the trees and out into the World Edge. For a second, Chan can see his shimmering form, standing on the path in the little valley that leads to this particular world. It’s always wet and misty in the World Edge, at least to Chan, though Wonwoo doesn’t seem to notice. The mist soaks into the fabric of Wonwoo’s shoulders, makes little beads of water stand out on his forehead and cheeks. Then he’s gone.

Seungcheol wraps his arms around Chan immediately, and Chan leans back into him, wrapping himself under the part of Seungcheol’s coat not stuck in the strap of his backpack. Seungcheol rests his forehead on Chan’s shoulder, and for a moment, they just stay like that: Chan basking in the feeling of Seungcheol all around him, Seungcheol holding him tight like he’s afraid to let Chan go.

Maybe he is. Once Chan leaves, he won’t be able to touch anything for several nights. That’s the way their schedule works: Chan sees Seungcheol, and then takes a break. It’s been that way since Seungcheol insisted on it back when Chan was in high school, when he was working at the dance studio and doing an early magicians’ program with the University, when he was stressed out of his mind.

“Hope he gets back safely,” Chan says, just to be polite. His words are muffled by Seungcheol’s shirt. He knows Wonwoo is probably at this very moment waking up on Professor Yoon’s couch, complaining about the jarring hum of Professor Yoon’s bass guitar that guides him in spirit trances. Seungcheol rubs his hand up and down between Chan’s shoulder blades. His chest and his hand on Chan’s back are solid, but not warm. Chan wishes for warmth sometimes with every fiber of his being—a phrase he’d often read and never understood before they started this. He wishes with his whole body.

He pushes up against Seungcheol with his whole body, too, stands on his tiptoes, hooks an arm around Seungcheol’s shoulders and breathes, “I’m so glad to see you,” against his mouth. When Seungcheol kisses him it’s like tumbling down the rocky, unformed landscape of the World Edge: dizzying, overwhelming, exhilarating. Dangerous, too—Chan can feel the hunger behind Seungcheol’s lips, taste the darkness on his tongue.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Seungcheol tells him between kisses. 

This routine is not new, although in the scheme of things, it is a recent development. It’s how their little missions always go: Wonwoo spirit-travels and meets Chan in whatever world they’ve arranged to go to, and sometimes Seungcheol joins them. Sometimes they meet up with Vernon or Seungkwan. They do their task, have their meetings, whatever. Chan helps keep everything solid and running. Then Wonwoo goes back to the office at the University where his body is. And Chan is left with Seungcheol.

“What do you want?” Chan asks. Seungcheol looks beautiful in the greyish light, too. He always looks beautiful to Chan—beautiful and strong, dependable in his grace, reliable the way that lightning is in a summer storm. 

Seungcheol eyes him unabashedly. Desire always looks good on him. “You,” he says plainly. 

Chan hits his arm. “Cheesy old man.”

Seungcheol moves in closer to him again and reaches behind Chan to grip his ass. “Maybe so,” he says. Then he lifts him by his ass and turns them both to push Chan into the nearest tree. He does it easily, and it’s no secret that Chan likes being manhandled by Seungcheol. Chan thunks his head back against the bark and wraps his legs around Seungcheol’s waist.

“Fuck,” Seungcheol says into Chan’s hair, “Channie.”

“Don’t fuck me in this park,” Chan says. 

“Wasn’t planning to.” Seungcheol rubs his face against Chan’s hair.

“You got someplace picked out? How long have you been in Chicago? Or were you not planning to fuck me at all?”

Seungcheol crowds even closer to Chan. Chan wishes he could smell him, feel his body heat, anything. In spirit, turned solid, Seungcheol is just as real as Wonwoo is. The only difference is that Wonwoo has a body, lying safely in a trance. Wonwoo ages. Wonwoo isn’t dead.

“Definitely planning to do that,” Seungcheol says.

Chan shivers in his arms and squeezes his thighs around Seungcheol’s waist. The bark is digging into his back, but he kind of doesn’t care. He’s missed Seungcheol: missed his laugh, his face, his body. It’s only been a few days, but still. Seungcheol has been one of the biggest constants of Chan’s life. Chan _needs_ him. “What are you waiting for, old man?” he teases, and Seungcheol grips him harder, jerks his hips against Chan. He’s hard; Chan can feel him against his leg, right next to where Chan’s own dick is swelling, hot and pulsing with life, in his slightly too-small pants.

It’s a little risky to call Seungcheol _old man_. Seungcheol, of course, never got a chance to be old. But even though it darkens his eyes and makes his presence ten times more menacing, he never asks Chan to stop, and so Chan baits Seungcheol with it until he gets what he wants.

Which, in this case, is Seungcheol kissing him against the tree, biting his lip and licking into his mouth and tasting of nothing at all. Chan kisses him back like he’s starved for it. He brings one hand up to the side of Seungcheol’s face, to his jaw, just to feel the bone move under his fingers. When Chan turns a spirit corporeal, the spirit’s body, wherever that may be, transcends the barrier between worlds and fills the shape of their spirit in. Wonwoo’s body on the couch in Professor Yoon’s office was probably no more than a wispy presence while he was with Chan. Wherever Seungcheol’s body is, it is well-preserved. His face feels exquisite.

Seungcheol swipes his tongue over Chan’s lips, and Chan feels a thrill in his chest, in his stomach. It took so long for Seungcheol to touch him. It makes his head spin every time they kiss. Seungcheol’s lips on his feel plush, soft, addictive. 

“There’s a house down the street,” Seungcheol says wetly against his mouth, “and nobody’s home for another week.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day,” Chan says. He squeezes Seungcheol’s waist again with his thighs. “Lead the way.”

  
  
  
❖❖  
  
  
  


Seungcheol doesn’t practice magic anymore, because he can’t. This was Chan’s primary reasoning to Professor Yoon’s advisory board to get him on the team. _His necromancy knowledge will come in handy_ , he’d said, _and we won’t have to worry about him practicing any of it. He’s good; he wants to be on the side of the government._

Excuses on excuses. That’s how it is with Chan and Seungcheol. 

_Tell me a story?_ Chan used to ask. _Teach me something_.

And Seungcheol would tell him about his life, but mostly he’d talk to him about magic, about his job. “You’ll need to know this if you want to understand people who misuse magic,” Seungcheol always said. A sentence that allowed him to tell Chan all kinds of things about necromancy that Chan would never have learned in his normal classes at school. Before Chan was really attuned to magic, and to Seungcheol’s presence, he hadn’t noticed how much _scarier_ Seungcheol got when he was talking about necromancy. How much more intensely ghostlike, how much darker.

If it stayed in the little boundary they made for themselves, it was safe.

 _Teach me something?_ Chan asks him every so often, like he doesn’t have professors, like he doesn’t have a projected career path with the University, a path that likely includes apprehending people who behave like Seungcheol used to. 

And Seungcheol does.

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


By the time they get to the house Seungcheol picked out, after a fiasco involving a dog and a neighbor’s house and much swearing from Chan, there isn’t quite as much time as he’d hoped there would be. 

“Not time for you to fuck me,” he says once he figures out the alarm system and lets Seungcheol inside. The one downside to making Seungcheol solid is he can’t move through objects anymore. 

Seungcheol grins a big dopey smile as he walks through the door, showing his gums. It’s stupid; it’s so stupid, but Chan missed him while he was waiting outside for Chan to lay the spells on the alarm system.

“Okay,” Seungcheol says, “then I’ll blow you right here.” And he pulls off his shoes and lets go of the two backpacks, and then he pushes Chan through the front entryway and up the stairs and into the living room. Chan puts his hands on Seungcheol’s shoulders and walks backward until his legs hit the couch, and there Seungcheol puts his own hands on Chan’s waist and turns them around so that he’s sitting on the couch and Chan is standing between his legs.

“You did a good job today,” Seungcheol starts.

Chan shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about the mission,” he says. “I just want to— _ah_ ,” he breaks off as Seungcheol shoves his hand between his legs and pushes up against his cock. He’s no longer hard, but Seungcheol’s wrist and the base of his palm rubbing over him quickly remedies him of that. 

“You do a good job every day,” Seungcheol amends. “So good, Channie. So beautiful; you looked so—you always look so powerful, you know.”

Chan squirms against Seungcheol’s grip. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he twists them in front of his stomach. “I am powerful.”

Seungcheol looks up at him, gaze dark. “I know,” he says, voice rolling like wheels over gravel down Chan’s throat, down his spinal cord, through his nerves and out over his hands. Seungcheol opens the buttons of Chan’s pants without moving his gaze from Chan’s face, shoves them down, shoves his underwear down too. And then he pushes Chan’s legs apart, and then his hand is really on Chan.

Maybe Chan is the cheesy one, because he thinks Seungcheol’s steady, thick fingers on him feel almost heavenly. Chan takes a fraction of a second to wish for warmth, too—selfishly, so selfishly, but that’s what he _is_ , that’s what they both are when it comes to each other—before he gives in to the feeling of Seungcheol’s rough fingers running along his cock. His head tilts back in pleasure. He’s always liked Seungcheol’s hands; likes them even better now when they stroke him to full hardness. 

Chan’s cock is hot, heavy, a dizzying contrast to Seungcheol’s plain hand. It makes it all the more intense.

“Come on, Channie,” Seungcheol says, pulling Chan in toward him with his legs, “let me suck you off.” 

Chan looks down at him. _Fuck_. That’s—it sets fireworks off behind Chan’s eyes: Seungcheol is sitting back on the couch with one hand on Chan and one hand pushed against his own clothed dick, mouth pink and bitten and eyes wide. His coat is still on. He looks desperate and hungry in a way Chan knows only has partly to do with sex. 

“Please,” Seungcheol says. “Please, Channie, let me—let hyung suck you off.”

Seungcheol’s barely-cloaked desire to, quite literally, _eat him alive_ is evident in his heavy gaze. The rush of power Chan feels from Seungcheol begging goes straight to his dick, making it jump in Seungcheol’s hand. 

“Okay,” Chan says. “Yeah.”

Seungcheol’s grip on him tightens immediately. He squeezes his thighs around Chan’s legs and maneuvers him to where he wants him, stroking his dick all the while. 

“Pretty,” he comments to Chan’s cock. It’s embarrassing, really, how much that affects him, but the casual praise would be even more embarrassing if it didn’t clearly turn Seungcheol on to say it. Chan reaches for Seungcheol’s shoulder and makes the mistake of watching as Seungcheol leans forward, bending down until Chan can only see the back of the top of his head. Then he kisses the tip of Chan’s cock. 

“Hyung,” Chan says breathlessly.

“Let me take care of you, baby,” Seungcheol says, mouthing kisses along Chan’s cock, wet and gentle enough to have Chan squirming. “Gonna make you feel so good.”

It’s the _baby_ , really, that keys Chan right up. He scrambles for purchase as his knees threaten to buckle and ends up with one hand gripping Seungcheol’s shoulder and one fisted in his hair.

Seungcheol leans back from his cock, then slides forward until he’s sitting on his knees on the floor.

“You’re going to fuck up your knees,” Chan complains.

Seungcheol’s grin is bright as the morning sun. “No, I won’t,” he says. “But you’re sweet for thinking about it.” He reaches up and runs his fingers over Chan’s chest briefly, right next to his nipple—a gentle, purely affectionate touch. Quite a contrast from the way his other hand grabs Chan’s cock roughly. His fingers are marked with callouses that will never leave. Chan jerks in his grip as he runs his thumb over the head, as he pushes against the slit. 

“Think we can get away with stealing some lube?” Seungcheol says. “Want to finger you, too.”

Chan is, generally speaking, morally opposed to stealing. And Seungcheol doesn’t really enjoy stealing things from strangers, although, if his stories are anything to go by, he had no problem taking things from his friends when he was young. But it’s the principle of the thing: Seungcheol’s fingers on Chan’s cock, leading him around by his desire, by his _pulse_ —Seungcheol below him, begging for him like he’ll die a second time if he doesn’t get to suck Chan off, but even still, the one in control, today. 

Because this is what gets to Chan: Seungcheol is bad, and Chan is good. Of course, things in real life aren’t divided like that exactly. But, if someone were to force Chan to look at the two of them objectively, like in an exam on creatures of differing magical abilities, that is what he would say: One is on the side of the law—the University, the government—and works against the misuse of magic across the Related Worlds, and the other is a necromancer and a ghost to boot, naturally and historically inclined to turn _good_ little magic-users to the side of evil.

They tussle because of it, sometimes. Both of them like the push and shove, the power exchange. It’s different every time, because Seungcheol and Chan are like mirror opposites of each other, equal— _matching_ —in their desires. 

Chan likes that he can be good for Seungcheol in a thoroughly different way than he can be good for the University. And being good for Seungcheol means being _bad_ ; means feeding a dark creature; means when Seungcheol digs the tip of his thumb into the wet slit of Chan’s cock and says, “Be a good student and steal me some lube so I can fuck you,” he means, _use your magic to conjure some from this stranger’s house. Use your magic for me_. Chan sucks in more of a breath than he intended, and when Seungcheol gathers the saliva onto his tongue and laughs softly against his cock, he breathes it out into a moan. 

Seungcheol grins up at him. “A joke,” he says, voice sliding around in his mouth because of the spit he’s had to abandon. “Don’t waste your time. Want to be here with you as long as I can.” 

“Suck me off, then,” Chan says, bold. 

Seungcheol winks at him, and then he opens his mouth, licks his teeth once, then covers them with his upper lip.

Chan watches as he guides his cock in. It’s so cliché, so nasty to say, really, but Chan knows Seungcheol feels the same way about him, so he doesn’t feel bad when he watches Seungcheol’s mouth with lowered lids and thinks, _His lips were made for sucking cock_. He just looks so _pretty_ , puffy lips parted around the pink flush of Chan’s cockhead—shit—

Chan stumbles over nothing and gasps as Seungcheol flattens his tongue and takes him deeper. Seungcheol reaches out and steadies him with a hand on his waist, then sucks, hard, holding Chan there while he tries not to automatically jerk into Seungcheol’s mouth.

Seungcheol pulls off, scowling playfully at him. “Who taught you how to fuck someone’s face?” he demands. “A doll? Give it to me, Channie; I can take it. Be a good little enchanter and put me in my place.”

“It was Soonyoung hyung,” Chan mutters as he watches the line of spit and precome that leads from the tip of his cock to Seungcheol’s lower lip. It breaks, and lands on Seungcheol’s chin. Seungcheol doesn’t change his expression. Maybe he doesn’t even feel it. 

Somewhere in the house, something ticks. Seungcheol’s grip on his waist tightens. Chan wishes he had more time with Seungcheol. He wishes he could feel what it does to Seungcheol when he asserts himself like this. He wishes he could _bruise_. 

Seungcheol reaches around and pushes Chan forward, into him, into his wet mouth. Chan’s hand flexes in his hair, and then he _tugs_. Seungcheol obviously loves it—he makes this noise that’s half-whine, half-growl as Chan snaps his hips hesitantly. He usually likes it as wet and messy as possible, and this time is no exception. He holds his other hand up, and Chan leans over to swipe his tongue over the palm of it, over the pads of Seungcheol’s fingers.

Seungcheol doesn’t even do anything with his newly-wet hand—he just gropes Chan’s ass more, encourages him forward, runs his hand up and down over the muscle and fat. 

Something creaks in the house like the building is settling in on itself. Seungcheol works over Chan’s dick, wet and easy, and Chan imagines he can feel every papilla of Seungcheol’s tongue. It’s grounding, despite the fact that Seungcheol is a ghost, and neither of them is all the way here, and _here_ is a completely different world in a completely different country—because _here_ is also in this strange living room with Seungcheol, surrounded by him, by the essence of him, with Seungcheol’s mouth, tongue, lips pulled over his teeth pressing down on Chan’s cock. _Here_ is just Chan and Seungcheol, and he’s so familiar, all of him is so familiar that Chan feels like he’s being folded in on himself, made real and real again as Seungcheol bobs his head and hollows his cheeks and sucks, sucks, _moans_.

Chan moans, too. He’s getting loud, now, something he’s usually careful about. Seungcheol leans forward, and Chan’s cock hits the back of his throat, slick and warm only from his own precome. Seungcheol gags a little, a reflex. Chan’s hips jerk just as Seungcheol pushes his finger between Chan’s ass cheeks and runs it over his hole, and Seungcheol makes a gurgling noise again.

“Shit,” Chan says, “ah— _shit_.”

Seungcheol looks up at him with those big eyes, and Chan feels like acid is running through his veins instead of blood. 

If Chan’s fucking cock weren’t literally in Seungcheol’s fucking mouth, Seungcheol would be pouting, too. As it is, his pretty lips are stretched over Chan’s cock, almost to the base, and his face—he looks so full—he looks like he’s having the time of his, well—

He blinks up at Chan, looking pretty and pleading and deceptively innocent. Chan wants to _ruin_ him, and in ruining him, be ruined by him. He wants to give Seungcheol everything he wants.

He puts his hand around the back of Seungcheol’s head and holds him there while he fucks deeper into him, falling over him like a plant cracked at the stem and losing himself in the wet slide, in the reflected warmth from his own body heat, in their noises.

Seungcheol pushes the tip of his finger against Chan’s rim, and then up, up—he crooks his finger just a little, like a hook right up against Chan’s skin, reeling him in, and Chan lets out a moan involuntarily—a shaky breath, a little cry. Seungcheol groans around his cock, reverberating all the way up Chan’s spine and into his brain, and then he sucks, swallows around Chan, and that’s—that’s really what it takes, just Seungcheol, beautiful, perfect, caring Seungcheol, urging him to hold him down and fuck his throat, loving it enough to reciprocate—it sends Chan flying, and then falling deliciously as his orgasm leans out and out and out and then crashes over him like a tsunami. Seungcheol finger-fucks him shallowly through it, and it’s so good Chan wonders if it’s possible to die from pleasure like this.

Seungcheol looks blissed-out, like sucking Chan’s dick makes him _that_ pleased. He always looks so good all messy, and the thing is that he _likes_ it. Likes it sloppy and rough and filled with the grosser parts of sex: cold lube, the slurping of his mouth on Chan’s cock, the tears that leak out from the corners of his eyes like it’s on purpose. 

Seungcheol fucking _whimpers_ as Chan puts his hands on Seungcheol’s shoulders and pulls his cock out. Chan is breathing heavily, gasping because he can’t help it, still wracked with waves of pleasure. His vision is hazy, flooding in with white, and he catches the briefest glimpse of Seungcheol—of his red, slick lips and his flushed face and his closed, wet eyes—before he finishes, comes on Seungcheol’s face with a loud cry.

It takes a minute for his vision to clear, and when it does, he nearly chokes on a gasp. There’s come on Seungcheol’s mouth, where he likes it, and in his long lashes. It’s over one cheek, on his lips and his teeth and tongue and dripping down his chin. He looks downright debauched. Debauched and disgusting.

“Fuck,” Seungcheol says, eyes still closed. “Channie.” 

His voice sounds the same as ever. Not fair—when Seungcheol fucks _his_ throat, he always sounds like someone has taken a grater to his voice. 

Seungcheol moves his hand from Chan’s ass down the back of one of his thighs. His touch is almost reverent. Chan needs to _not_ let that go to his head, but it’s true that the only times Seungcheol can feel things like this—can feel things at all—are when he’s with Chan. 

Seungcheol opens his eyes. They’re bright, gleaming unnaturally in the dimness of the room. Even though he’s got come all over his face, he looks menacing, delighted. Chan imagines feeling Seungcheol’s Daegu accent sliding down his own throat. An exchange.

“You’re hard,” Chan says stupidly. He feels like a puppet whose strings have been cut, ready to topple onto Seungcheol and push him into the couch at a moment’s notice.

Seungcheol is really not a gentleman. Chan knows he’s not going to say _Oh, don’t worry about it; I’ll take care of it_. Instead, he blinks his come-dotted lashes and says, teasing, pouting like he’s begging someone for a free sweet at an outdoor market, “You going to do something about it?”

Chan smiles, tiny. “Yeah. You made me tired, though. Might just fall asleep on top of you.”

Seungcheol pouts some more.

“Unless you’re into that,” Chan says, trying to make a joke.

Seungcheol raises an eyebrow. “Fucking you in your sleep?”

Chan shoves against his shoulder. “Fuck off.”

“I will,” Seungcheol says, “in about ten minutes. It’s almost time for you to go back. You need rest, real rest. You’ve been busy, so—”

Chan shakes his head to silence him. Ten minutes is okay. He can get Seungcheol off _and_ cuddle on this stranger’s couch in ten minutes. 

“Okay, hyung,” he says. “Please don’t talk about work. I just want to make you feel good.”

Seungcheol kisses him right on his stomach, come and spit making a little relief of Seungcheol’s lips like a swipe of paint left by a palette knife on his skin.

It’s easy, it’s so easy to slip past want and straight into dangerous _feelings_ territory where Seungcheol is concerned. Sucking Chan off is part of their arrangement. Kissing his stomach stupidly is not. Chan reels himself in just in time before he opens his mouth and really puts his foot in it.

“Okay, Channie,” Seungcheol echoes. “Come make me feel good.”

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


It’s supposed to be casual. It’s like a simple math problem, or at least it used to be. They both benefit from their arrangement.

Chan needs to not complicate things.

Seungcheol waves at him as he leaves. Chan tries not to stare too longingly, but he lets his gaze linger on the bullet holes in Seungcheol’s coat, on the way the backpack settles on him, the weight of it that will go away as soon as Chan leaves. The flush to Seungcheol’s cheeks, the post-orgasm, hastily-cleaned up look that Chan put on his face. His stature. 

Him.

Chan slips right into sleep as soon as he gets back to the University and wakes feeling empty.


	2. soul studies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chan has had the dreams for as long as he can remember. He’d thought they were normal, as children always do: surely, he’d thought, everyone falls asleep, then gets up and walks out their bedroom door into a different world. In Chan’s dreams, there was always a winding, rocky path in a cliff face that led from his room to countless valleys that were full of strange and wonderful things, where everything was just on the other side of familiar the way dreams always are.

_I passed_  
_through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled_  
_around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made_  
_this place for you. A place for you to love me._

— Richard Siken, "Snow and Dirty Rain" (12B)  
  
  
  
Chan has had the dreams for as long as he can remember. He’d thought they were normal, as children always do: surely, he’d thought, everyone falls asleep, then gets up and walks out their bedroom door into a different world. In Chan’s dreams, there was always a winding, rocky path in a cliff face that led from his room to countless valleys that were full of strange and wonderful things, where everything was just on the other side of familiar the way dreams always are. 

The Related Worlds, the valleys, alternate universes—Chan is one of a handful of people who can carry solid objects from one to another. It is for this reason that Professor Yoon always says he’s the key to their team.

Seungcheol knows all about the Related Worlds. He’d been wandering the World Edge for ten years when he’d told Chan about how they formed. He knows all the technical terms, too: the Related Worlds, the World Edge, Series Twelve, World 12D. 

Generally speaking, there exist countless versions of the same person across the worlds in a series. They may not have the same names, or the same personalities, or the same experiences at all. But they do, in some way, have the same presence. There exists, in every world in Series Twelve, some version of Jeon Wonwoo. Or Vernon. Or Seungkwan.

Sometimes, there are mistakes. Little anomalies. A child doesn’t get born, for some reason. The person who should have developed gets smushed into one of the other _them_ s in a different world, and that person has two lives in their body. Sometimes, this can happen with every life in the series, until there’s one person with nine lives—and, therefore, nine people’s magic—stuffed into them. Such a person is the most powerful type of enchanter.

It is possible to travel through the Related Worlds without disturbing one’s worldly presence. Possible, but not usual. Not many people can do it, which is why spirit-travelers are highly valued. They can project their spirits out beyond the confines of the world their body remains in. It’s difficult, and somewhat dangerous. Their trances don’t last more than a few hours, and they are usually intangible, as only their spirits are there.

Chan was born with eight lives. He can leave one life behind, sleeping in his bed, and take his other lives out into the World Edge, through the rocky valley with its rivers and waterfalls, and into other worlds, where he can touch things, where he can affect things, from which he can bring back solid objects. 

Where he can die.

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


“Why don’t you ever wear different clothes?” Chan had asked Seungcheol. 

It was a borrowed question; he’d drawn pictures of Seungcheol in class, and one of his friends had asked him why he wore the same outfit in all three of Chan’s illustrations.

“I only have these,” Seungcheol said. He shrugged his shoulders, making the front pieces of his long brown coat move sideways, exposing the two bullet holes. “I’m not, you know… alive. These are what I died in.”

They were in one of the Series Four worlds, and had ended up on a little raft going from one island to another. Series Four had a lot of water, and all sorts of strange fish creatures. The part of the world they were in was populated by people who spoke a language they did not know, and so they got along by miming most of the time. Fortunately, this meant the people pushing the raft along couldn’t understand what they were saying, either. This was before Can had learned how to solidify Seungcheol, so he looked like he was talking to himself on the raft.

It was okay. It never bothered him.

“Did you get shot?” Chan asked him. 

Seungcheol laughed, although Chan couldn’t see what was funny. “I did,” he said, “but that wasn’t what killed me. That was a long time before. I just only had this one coat. I wore it when I died. I guess I was cold.” 

Past tense, of course. Seungcheol is stuck wearing a coat, but he will never be cold again.

That’s all he said about dying for a long while. 

Chan didn’t know then, at age nine, that ghosts are dark creatures. That Seungcheol, being a necromancer, was keenly aware of that fact, even more so than regular ghosts are. Later, when he was allowed to go into the restricted section of the library at first his middle school, then his high school, then the University, he would pull all the books he could find on ghosts, would try to read them and eventually give up, telling himself he knew all about ghosts anyway from Seungcheol. He’d find out that ghosts can get melancholy. That it’s bad parlance to bring up the circumstances of a ghost’s death. That to do so can trigger some sort of malevolent feeling, some primal urge, in the ghost. 

That once someone turns into a ghost, there’s no going back. Their essence becomes corrupt, whether they like it or not. 

“The only choice you have comes after that,” Seungcheol said when Chan was in middle school. “You always feel a pull to succumb to that darkness. You either resist it—this time—or you don’t.”

Chan can’t remember now where exactly they had this conversation. Somewhere in Series Seven, in the mountains. Seungcheol had taken him skiing, and then they’d gotten hot chocolate, and Seungcheol had watched him drink it wistfully, like he was remembering what it tasted like.

“Have you ever, you know,” Chan said around the rim of his mug, waving his arm around like it would help demonstrate his point further, “succumbed? To the darkness, and all that? Do you, like, possess people?” He was thirteen and morbidly curious. None of the books he’d found in his school libraries was sufficient.

Seungcheol, he was very interested to see, blushed. “Once or twice,” he said. “Very briefly. Possessed a dog once, scared the shit out of its owner—oops, sorry for swearing.”

Chan giggled. 

Seungcheol crossed his arms and stared out the window of the little cafe where they were sitting. “It wasn’t a full possession,” he said, like it was vital that Chan know this. “It was quick. And it was years ago. Before I met you.”

“Did it feel good?” Chan wanted to know, and nothing could have prepared him for the way the muscles of Seungcheol’s arm tightened, for the way he stared into nothing with an intensity that sent a thrill of fear down Chan’s spine. 

Seungcheol’s eyes were like liquid, soft velvet, black holes sucking Chan in. He licked his lips, closed his eyes, and then raised his lids slowly as he let his mouth fall open, showing his teeth. “It was the best.”

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


Professor Yoon’s office is the largest in his wing of the University complex, but you wouldn’t know it from being inside: it’s divided into thirds by screens, and there are pieces of furniture, piles of papers, photographs and random bits of magical experiments everywhere. One-third of the office is devoted to his couch bed, which is usually occupied by Professor Yoon himself but on occasion has hosted Wonwoo, both in regular sleep and in a spirit-traveling trance, Chan after midterms three years ago, Chan after finals last year, Chan last week for no reason, and, most out of anybody except the Professor, Soonyoung.

Soonyoung is there when Chan walks in. He’s supposed to use the main door, in the middle third of the office—all the students are, even grad students like Chan—but Chan has known Professor Yoon since high school, and he’s part of Professor Yoon’s specially-chosen team, and, most importantly, Professor Yoon never calls him out on it. So he uses the side door, the one with the little beaded curtain and the polaroid photograph of Jeonghan himself just above the doorknob.

Soonyoung is curled up on the arm of the couch, pretending to be asleep. The back wall of the office is covered in windows, and the new sunlight filters in through the shades in a soft, off-white glow. Soonyoung looks cozy—almost too cozy. Chan can see the way he holds his tail that he’s only staying still to better observe Chan as he walks in.

“Hey,” Chan says quietly. “Good morning. Is the Professor here?”

Soonyoung continues to pretend to be asleep.

Chan sighs. “Brought you breakfast,” he says. He has no idea what to call Soonyoung anymore, now that he’s a cat. He used to be _hyung_ , and Professor Yoon calls him _kitten_ , but he’s really neither of those things anymore. It’s been three years, and Chan still tries not to call him anything at all. 

Chan knows it hurts him when he avoids Soonyoung, so he makes an effort to bring him things he likes: milk, mouse toys, meat. Wonwoo has shown him how to pet Soonyoung properly, and he can tell Soonyoung appreciates it, but he still can’t help the way his toes curl painfully, the way his arms tense, whenever Soonyoung gets near.

Another thing that breaks Chan’s heart.

Soonyoung flicks his tail as the scent of minced meat hits his nose. Chan laughs as he opens one eye, then the other. 

“Done sleeping?” he teases as he sets the bowl on the floor.

Soonyoung sneezes, much the same way he did as a human.

Chan laughs again. Soonyoung waves his tail as if to say _thank you for breakfast, now fuck off_. 

“Is the Professor here?” Chan asks again. 

Soonyoung hesitates before nodding. He ignores Chan in favor of investigating his breakfast as Chan walks through to the other side of the screen. There’s a very slight tearing feeling, and Chan realizes belatedly that there was a pretty strong Don’t Notice spell attached to the crack between the screens. It would deter most of Professor Yoon’s students, and much of the staff as well, but magicians’ magic to Chan is so easy to get around that he almost doesn’t notice it most of the time. 

Professor Yoon is indeed there, talking on the phone with one leg propped on his desk. He stops mid-sentence and glances up, but he relaxes when he sees Chan and begins talking again. Chan waits patiently by the screen as he says into the receiver, “Yes, I _know_ they’re illegal, but we need them for our experiment so we can trace where they’re coming from. I don’t know, make some excuse. Get us a permit from a government agency. We can take someone onto the team for the time being—Jihoon or Seokmin or Yerim or someone—no, _not_ her, not—no, if you mention Hyunah one more time, I _will_ throw rocks down your chimney—okay, yes, okay. Fine. Just do it quickly.” 

He glances up again and gestures for Chan to sit down on one of his comfortable chairs. _Wonwoo will be here in five,_ he mouths. Chan gives him a brief nod before he goes to sit down. The chairs are underneath the window, which is good, because the window is the only bright part of the room, despite the walls being painted white. The rest of the place is covered in cork boards, posters and various items hammered into the wall. If Professor Yoon weren’t such a mainstay at the University, he’d get a fine for destroying the place. Instead, there’s a plaque next to the main door that says _Inter-World Society of Soul Studies Professors, 1996_ that looks like it’s been up since it was brand new. 

Soul Studies is the name for Professor Yoon’s and Chan’s field. The name has always struck Chan as a little silly, but he didn’t get to pick it, and Professor Yoon thinks so poorly of some of his colleagues he doesn’t dare ask who did. It’s the study of souls, of course, which is so broad as to be laughable. Professor Yoon’s particular niche is the study of souls as they pertain to individuals with more than one life—individuals like Chan.

Not only Chan, of course—Professor Yoon has all sorts of experiments and studies and journals and whatnot—but Chan is aware that, as valuable as he is to Professor Yoon as a member of his team of people who travel the Related Worlds, which is part of what the government funds the University in order to do, he is also—and perhaps even more so—valuable as a case study.

He tries not to wonder if it’s in Professor Yoon’s best interest for him to lose a life under his care or not. 

It makes their dynamic a little fraught, not least because Chan also _trusts_ Professor Yoon in some deep, unshakable way. 

“Then _get him on the line_ ,” Professor Yoon is saying angrily into the receiver of his telephone now. He looks over at Chan and rolls his eyes. _Fucking bureaucrats_ , he mouths. Chan suppresses his laugh. “No,” Professor Yoon complains, turning back to the receiver and groping along his desk with one hand, searching for a pen and paper. “I told you, they’re all out. You’ll have to get another permit, _and_ contract a spirit-traveler. No, she’s out of commission. No. For fu—” he pauses his hasty doodling to take the receiver away from his ear with both hands. 

“They want Wonwoo,” he mutters to Chan.

Chan widens his eyes and shakes his head. _I can’t believe it! How could they ask such a thing!_

Professor Yoon shakes his head too as if to say, _I know, right? Seriously._

Chan muffles his giggle into his hand as Professor Yoon turns back to the phone. “You can’t have Jeon Wonwoo,” he says. “He’s mine. Good day.” He hangs up and throws his pen at the cork board in front of him, where it sticks like a dart. “These people,” he groans under his breath. “Don’t you ever get into bureaucracy, Channie,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”

Chan doesn’t have the heart to remind him his future’s cut out for him already.

He’s saved by Wonwoo poking his head around the second screen. He looks tired, worn-out in a way his spirit never shows. Chan knows he doesn’t sleep well anymore. He hasn’t in the last three years, not since Jun and Soonyoung’s accident. It’s part of why Professor Yoon makes him go into trances so often, to at least get him _some_ sleep.

“Professor,” Wonwoo says, and it’s his same familiar voice, though, the same smooth, deep smoke. “Are you ready for the debrief?”

Professor Yoon, when his full attention is on Chan and Wonwoo, cuts quite a commanding figure, despite being shorter than Wonwoo. With his strong arms folded over his chest and his bony fingers peeking over, and his feet placed steadily apart, he always seems like he belongs somewhere else, not in the dusty corridors and courtyards of the University. 

“Come help me set up this looking glass,” he says, “and let’s discuss.”

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  
  


Professor Yoon is an experimentalist. For all that he and Chan can pretend their dynamic is different—a professor and his protégé, a fifty-two-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old, a magician and an enchanter—the unavoidable truth is that Professor Yoon studies life, and Chan is his subject.

Like Superman and Batman, one is nearly all-powerful, and the other holds the last resort. 

Chan’s kryptonite.

He doesn’t know if Professor Yoon carries dragons’ blood on his person specifically because of him. Being a magician is a great excuse, if anyone asks. It’s one of the two things he’s never talked to Professor Yoon about. The other one, of course, is Seungcheol.

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


The Academy is a sprawling, awful-looking complex built on the side of a mountain. Half of it is old palace buildings; half of it is modern. Whoever designed it tried to keep the general look of the place, but only restored the old parts with some sort of stasis magic that everyone is afraid to break for fear of the whole thing coming apart. There are spells everywhere—to get rid of moths and other critters, to keep the place warm, to keep food fresh for longer. Not everyone who works in it can feel these spells, but to someone as sensitive to magic as Chan is, it’s rather suffocating. There’s a buzzing everywhere that he almost never notices, until he either leaves or it gets to be too much. 

He used to take hikes with the rest of the team up the mountain to get away from it. Now he only has his dreams.

Professor Yoon’s office is in the middle, in a small building made of two old halls connected in the middle by a newer structure that’s ever so slightly a different style and color palette. Wonwoo has an office, too, in the cramped, modern building full of cramped, modern offices. He has a couch and a desk and only about half a meter between the two. It’s always full of papers and books and notebooks with the page corners turned down, and Wonwoo is almost never in it. He used to spend all his time in the library with Jun, and now he spends all his time in the library alone.

Chan’s office is right next to his. 

The last time Chan went on a hike with their old team—Jun, Soonyoung, Wonwoo—even the Professor had come along—it had been summer. August 11th; he remembers because it was his half-birthday, and Jun had sung him a little song, and Wonwoo had made him a flower crown. He was so happy then, among people he—well, to say _loved_ when he talks about his colleagues sounds a bit silly, but he really did love them. He’d felt like he was floating, like all his lives would peel away like balloons out of a child’s hand if he wasn’t careful enough.

But however happy he had been, it was nothing compared to Jun and Wonwoo. There was—always, there seemed to be an ease to them, like they were familiar to each other, under the surfaces of their skin.

Wonwoo was in love with Jun. It’s easy to see that, looking back, looking at his attitude now. 

Jun used to put Wonwoo into his spirit trances. The easiest way to put someone in a trance is through music, and Jun had magical fingers that could dance over a piano keyboard and into anyone’s heart. Chan had only heard him play for trances a few times, because Wonwoo would usually go into trances at night, when Chan was already asleep. Chan had been in awe watching both Jun’s fingers and his expression as he’d played.

Chan is a graduate student at the University. He gets to grade papers for Professor Yoon and complain about salaries with Rocky and Lisa. Day-in, day-out, it feels like all he does is read bullshit essays written between three and six in the morning, read books for his own practical thesis work, feed Soonyoung and act as Professor Yoon’s delivery boy. Only instead of bringing him mail from the front office, he also fetches illegal materials from across the Related Worlds. Lucky him. 

“When I was your age, I didn’t have nearly the level of discipline to deal with this,” Wonwoo had told him once, a few years ago. (Chan remembers exactly when it was: five weeks after he came to the arrangement with Seungcheol.) They were eating lunch together in the cafeteria, after Chan had brought back five bottles of dream juice and nearly died in the process, prompting Professor Yoon to cancel his class to fuss and run diagnostics on him for most of the morning.

Chan raised an eyebrow and finished chewing his zucchini pancake. “To deal with what?”

Wonwoo waved his chopsticks around for emphasis. “Odd personalities with mysterious and tragic backstories,” he said. 

Chan looked at him. 

“Like Professor Yoon,” Wonwoo clarified. “Or—”

“I have a tragic backstory, too,” Chan said drily before Wonwoo could get into their well-worn argument about Seungcheol. “I lost my life.”

Wonwoo snorted. “You recovered.” He looked at Chan searchingly for a moment longer. Chan gave him a little uncertain smile and tried not to look too nervous.

“I worry about you,” Wonwoo finally said, and pushed the plate of zucchini pancakes toward Chan as if to demonstrate this. “You’ve read about ghosts,” he whispered, voice low as Seungcheol’s, but gentle, full and smooth in the way Seungcheol’s rarely is. “He’s latched onto you. Don’t make a face, Channie; I _know_ he has, because I know you. He’s drawn to your lives. He can’t help it. _And_ he’s a necromancer,” he added when Chan opened his mouth to speak. “He’s someone who literally uses magic for evil.”

“He _used_ to,” Chan said. He felt bad, wrong, for discussing Seungcheol like this when Seungcheol wasn’t there. “He’s using his knowledge for the University now. And it’s not like he can actually do any magic when he’s, you know.”

Wonwoo gave him another long, unreadable look. “When I was your age,” he said, “I wanted to be a writer. Not the type of thing I do now—I want to edit literary journals.”

Chan did not know this. “What kind?” he asked slightly mutinously, although he was genuinely interested in the answer.

Wonwoo blushed. “Um, all sorts,” he said. “Fantasy. Poetry. Flash fiction. Erotica. Video game fan fiction. I wasn’t picky. I did spirit-traveling with the University as a side gig, but my graduate work was all in literary analysis, editing, impact on society, that sort of thing. I didn’t want to work here, not really.”

Chan huffed out a laugh through his nose. “So what changed?”

The slow, wistful smile that spread on Wonwoo’s handsome face was out of place in the somewhat stifling cafeteria. “Jun,” he said simply. 

Jun, the beautiful piano player. 

Jun, who had known Wonwoo before Chan joined the team, who had shown Chan his favorite place on the mountain, who had jumped in front of Soonyoung the last time any of them had gone in the flesh to the World Edge, who had been shot with a weapon they still haven’t been able to identify. Jun, who had completely disappeared without a trace. Jun, who was gone.

Chan drained the last of his fizzy drink, traced the water left on the table from the dripping condensation with his index finger. “What are you trying to say?”

Wonwoo squinted at him, even through his glasses. “I’m saying that I got into this line of work because of a beautiful man.” He laughed at himself slightly. “But why are you doing this? Why are you working here?”

“I’ve got eight lives.” The answer came easily.

Wonwoo shook his head. “You have six now. And that’s not a reason.”

Chan looked at him sharply. Wonwoo never quails under him, not like others do, and he didn’t then, either. He held Chan’s gaze steadily. “I have to,” Chan said, deliberately too gently to be considered a snap. “Who else is going to do it?”

Wonwoo put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his thumbs behind his steepled fingers. “Just remember that you have a choice,” he said. “You don’t belong to the school, or to Professor Yoon, or to anyone. It’s not a guarantee that you have to give your lives to—to anyone.”

“If you’re referring to Seungcheol,” Chan said, “he doesn’t—”

“Doesn’t want your lives?” Wonwoo interrupted. “Chan.”

The back of Chan’s neck prickled—with shame, with embarrassment, with something—and he didn’t know why. “I can handle it,” he said, voice a little rougher. He straightened, erased his expression. Sent the water on the table to the kitchen sink without so much as a wave of his hand. He stood up. He smiled at Wonwoo, the fake one where he’s aware of every muscle. “I am an enchanter, you know.”

Wonwoo looked down at the table. The conversation was over, but it lingered in Chan’s mind for years afterward. The awful truth is that Chan knows he could leave the University. He doesn’t even have to finish his degree, technically: he can set up shop somewhere, apply to a different school, give up everything and take up dancing, whatever. The truth of it is that it’s convenient.

Chan used to go on adventures with Seungcheol when he was a kid. Not many people can see ghosts, and Seungcheol was lonely. Later, Chan figured out how to make Seungcheol solid—how to bring a tiny bit of his body into his spirit. Then Seungcheol could feel things again, albeit not in the exact same way as when he was alive. That’s how it’s supposed to work, now: Chan uses Seungcheol for help with the University team, and Seungcheol uses Chan to feel things. 

Wonwoo’s face now when he talks about Jun is familiar to Chan. He recognizes himself in Wonwoo’s features, in the twitch of his brow and the twist of his lips.

Chan loves his job, but he’s not enamored with it enough to pretend it isn’t also an excuse to keep seeing Seungcheol, to keep adventuring with him, to keep having sex with him. He works for Professor Yoon, for the goal of the University, but he stays doing it for Seungcheol. 

  
  
  


❖❖

  
  
  


Johnny Suh’s dragons’ blood didn’t come through. It should have; they used the same potion they did last month, when they brought a spell-laden leather jacket from World 3C.

“It’s alright,” Professor Yoon says. “Dragons’ blood is more powerful than leather, and closer to the source. It’s literally dried blood. Maybe that’s why.” He says it nonchalantly, bluntly, the way he says everything, but Chan can tell he’s not convinced.

His best guess is that it’s floating around the World Edge somewhere. Chan mentally curses himself. If he had gone with Wonwoo, maybe the dragons’ blood would be safely in Professor Yoon’s office. If Chan hadn’t been breaking into a stranger’s living room in Skokie and getting his brains sucked out through his dick by Seungcheol, he would have realized sooner. 

Maybe he’d have been able to collect it somehow, or at least to see where it went. Instead, Wonwoo had to relay the news to Professor Yoon, while Chan’s body slept soundly in his bed as he fucked off and had sex. Stupid, selfish. He’s supposed to be the glue that holds the team together.

Wonwoo’s license says _Jeon Wonwoo, Spirit-traveler, First Class,_ and that’s it. He’s not allowed to talk about most of what he does, which, from what Chan has gathered, mostly involves a lot of going through academic papers and crossing things out in red pen, and then spirit-traveling to yell at people about the papers. Only he doesn’t yell. He just stands there, all tall and disappointed-like, and waits for them to shrivel up inside.

Chan doesn’t know if the people he talks to on his other spirit traveling adventures actually do feel like they’re shriveling up inside, but Chan has seen him do this little trick with several people before. Usually professors and officers, but a handful of students have gotten on the wrong side of a pissed-off Wonwoo.

Wonwoo never acts like this around Chan, nor around Professor Yoon. He’s _nice_ ; he’s fun. He giggles and makes stupid jokes and chews on the sleeves of his shirts. 

He doesn’t sleep. With Professor Yoon, he’s sweet, but he’s cautious. With Chan, he’s wild. Performing, begging for something Chan can’t give him almost like he doesn’t expect Chan to. 

In short, he’s a mess. 

He’s both cautious and over the top now, as he helps Professor Yoon tune the mirrors in the third section of the office. This is Chan’s favorite part of the room. It has all the instruments, the things that actually _do_ the scientific part of the magic. Professor Yoon isn’t an enchanter, and neither is Wonwoo, and so their methods are different from Chan’s. It’s all very technical. Chan likes it, even if he doesn’t understand all the computations and calculations and academic theory papers about it.

“Johnny Suh knows about David Casper,” Wonwoo says to Professor Yoon as he drags a full-length mirror over from the stack in the corner. He sets it down and pulls a face at Chan through it. Chan sighs. 

“Almost everyone does,” Professor Yoon says. “Still, good to know. But it doesn’t seem like he’s getting his supplies from Casper?”

Chan shakes his head. “He’s fishy. Something about him doesn’t add up.”

“Maybe that’s just how he is. You know, bad vibes.”

Chan fixes Wonwoo with a _look_ . Wonwoo puts his hands up as if to say, _Just a suggestion!_

Professor Yoon drags another mirror over, puts it catty-corner to the first one so they form a sort of triangle, then disappears behind the second one to fiddle around with the spells on the back.

“What are we looking for?” Chan says. “Are we going somewhere?”

The mirror turns into a window just as Professor Yoon stops shaking his head. He’s holding a pen between pursed lips. “Just looking,” he says around the pen. He taps on the frame. “If we find something, we might go in, but right now we’re just trying to see if we detect a trace of the dragons’ blood.”

Chan frowns. He does not have good memories of the last time they’d tried to go somewhere like this. “Why am I here?” he asks. He can’t detect the dragons’ blood at all.

Professor Yoon raises an eyebrow. 

“Professor,” Chan adds. 

Professor Yoon turns back to the transparent mirror, which is slowly turning green and fogging back up. “To activate the mirrors,” he says, “and to turn it into a gateway if we need to go. I can collect the packages if we find them.”

Chan bites the inside of his lip. “‘Kay.” 

The mirror fogs up all the way. The green dissipates, then fades to the messy brown palette of the World Edge.

It sharpens, then shifts around as Professor Yoon adjusts the other mirror, then the dials on his machines. 

“Chan,” Professor Yoon says, “can you make this sharper for me?”

Chan’s magic isn’t anything like Professor Yoon’s or Wonwoo’s. He doesn’t need to mutter spells, although he did have to learn them. He can just _think_ , and things happen, more or less. It’s taken years for him to hone it. Conjuring took him forever: learning how to conjure only the thing that was needed without extraneous bits like background wall or part of a table was surprisingly difficult. But Chan has always been good at control. 

Tuning the mirrors is not difficult, but only because Chan has sat with Professor Yoon nearly every day for the last five years and trained. He reaches up to put a hand on each frame and imagines that they’re pushing against the fabric of the world, stretching it thinner with each beep of Professor Yoon’s dashboard, thinner and thinner and thinner like gum, until it’s nearly transparent.

“There we go,” Professor Yoon says, always one to give gentle praise when Chan needs it most. 

It’s not a true gateway—more of a window than a door. Mirror magic has come a long way in the last thirty years or so. Professor Yoon likes to tell stories of pouring bleach and various other concoctions over mirrors when he was learning in middle school, of having to take carefully-bundled mirrors from place to place in search of scholars powerful enough to tune them. If this were thirty years ago, they would have to have a mirror expert in addition to Professor Yoon, and someone to go spirit-traveling with a spirit trace to locate the packages, and someone else to go through the gateway once they’d located everything. And someone powerful enough—an enchanter, most likely—to tune the mirrors to the specific frequency of the item they’re looking for.

It’s a good thing science has advanced since then, because the only enchanter on hand is Chan, and his magic won’t work on dragons’ blood. Professor Yoon tunes the dials and buttons on his dashboard and the image in the mirror flickers, waves, shifts back into focus around the World Edge.

Professor Yoon reaches into his pocket and takes out his own pouch of dragons’ blood. Chan can’t help his hard swallow as the pungent, tangy smell fills the air. It won’t affect him when it’s like this, but even just the suggestion makes him nervous. He feels a prickling break out on the backs of his neck and hands. 

Professor Yoon takes a toothpick from one of the cluttered tables and sticks it into the pouch, then removes it. As soon as he places it on the little dashboard, the picture in the mirror blurs. Wonwoo and Chan hold their breaths as the mirror begins emitting a high-pitched noise.

Tuning it to dragons’ blood is a tricky business. The spells they’re using to locate it are normally used to detect life. Blood does fit into this category, but they’re looking for blood that’s dried and powdered and packaged, and long-extracted from its dragon. So the tuning must be very fine.

The mirror begins smoking as it narrows down its search. Professor Yoon guides the image along the rocky slopes of the World Edge.

“What do you see?” Chan whispers to Wonwoo.

“A bunch of brown fog,” Wonwoo says. “Is that what the World Edge looks like to you? I can never see anything in there.”

Chan shakes his head. “It’s foggier in the mirror, but it’s like this big cavern. There’s no sky, and you start out in the middle of the cliffs, so if you make a wrong move, you plummet down.”

“Scary,” Wonwoo whispers.

Chan shrugs. “I’ve been doing it since forever.”

Wonwoo looks at him sidelong, but doesn’t say anything in response. The mirror continues to shriek. A glimmer of red appears among the brown—

“Stop,” Wonwoo says. “No, go back—there. Did you see that? Focus on the middle.”

The package comes into view slowly. It looks largely the same as it did when Wonwoo dropped it, if a little dented. The three of them stare at it for a second. It looks sort of sad and lonely, but inviting all the same. Chan has had enough adventures to know that there’s a fifty-percent chance anything that looks sad, lonely and inviting is a trap.

Something brushes against his leg. He looks down. Soonyoung flicks his tail against Chan’s calf again and looks up at Wonwoo, who immediately crouches down to scratch at his head.

“Should we make a gateway?” Wonwoo asks from the floor. Soonyoung’s tail beats a regular rhythm against Chan’s leg. He’s concentrating. “It doesn’t look like all the packages are in the same place,” Wonwoo says. “Should we get them one-by-one?”

“I’ll go,” Professor Yoon says, already rolling up his sleeves. “You know how dangerous gateways can be. We can’t afford to lose either of you. Chan, please get out the book on mirror magic,” he adds before Wonwoo or Chan can protest that they can’t afford to lose him, either.

Setting up the gateway is easy. Chan can activate these spells in no time. He can’t put a trace on Professor Yoon if he’s to carry the dragons’ blood back with him, and Wonwoo isn’t strong enough to make one, but Professor Yoon seems confident. 

“I’ll go through, get it, and come back,” he says. Wonwoo picks Soonyoung up, and Professor Yoon gives him a tiny kiss on the head before he begins his own magical preparations.

It takes an hour and a half to set up both the gateway and Professor Yoon, and thirteen seconds for it all to go wrong. Professor Yoon looks around as soon as he steps through to the other side, like he’s heard a noise. There’s a strong flash of green light around the edge of the gateway that causes Soonyoung to scramble up Wonwoo’s arm to his shoulders, and then a rushing sensation. Waterfall-like sound fills the office. Then an overwhelming presence that Chan can’t parse.

“Get the package and get out of there,” Wonwoo yells to Professor Yoon as he rushes to the dials, but Professor Yoon doesn’t pay any attention. He can’t hear Wonwoo.

More flashes of light. A wind blows the Professor’s hair back from his head. He’s starting to get damp in the perpetual mist. 

There’s _something_ coming through the gateway into the office, but Chan can tell most of the presence, whatever it is, is still on the other side. He watches as Professor Yoon reaches down for the package. 

“He needs to get out of there,” Wonwoo says, desperately pushing buttons while trying to balance Soonyoung over his shoulders. The mirror starts squealing again. “There’s a reason people don’t set up gateways, and dragons’ blood is so fucking dangerous—we shouldn’t have—I—”

Chan is only halfway paying attention. He stares hard at the mirror, trying to reach out with his magical senses and see what it is that’s causing the chaos. On the other side, Professor Yoon jumps like he’s heard a gunshot. As his fingers touch the package of dragons’ blood, Chan realizes two things: the gateway is tuned to such a high degree that it detects clearly even the smallest touch of life. And part of the presence feels familiar, achingly so.

He’s so stupid not to have realized it immediately.

Seungcheol. He can feel the pull even through the gateway. Magnified like this, it tickles every particle in his body, orients every cell to face him like a balloon pulling hair. It’s definitely him—his presence in action, the crack and promise of static electricity jumping between two objects, blown up so much that the particles of him become meaningless. The life that floats around the World Edge, as someone who can’t see ghosts would sense him, magnified by a thousand. Pure remnant, nothing more than a fleeting feeling. 

Something in him, in the spaces between his particles, calls to Chan like a song, and something raw and yearning in Chan feels compelled to answer.

Desire seeps into the room through the gateway and makes the hairs on Chan’s arm stand up. The corner of the office where he and Wonwoo are standing fills with the intensity of it: a thirst for life that Chan recognizes, and a restraint he knows intimately. This way, not bound by Seungcheol’s body, it presses into every part of Chan with a sharp, rumbling ache. Seungcheol is hungry, _starved_. 

Chan shudders. The noise of the mirror fills his ears.

Something is wrong, though. It’s not Seungcheol, not really. Something is— _off_ about the presence.

Professor Yoon picks up the package carefully. He turns to step through the gateway. He takes one step—and something invisible flies into him bodily, throwing him onto the rocky ground like a rag doll. 

Chan waits three seconds. Professor Yoon doesn’t move.

“Chan!” Wonwoo yells at him over the shrieking of the mirror. Chan ignores him. He has six lives left; it’s fine.

He steps through. 

He only dimly registers that it’s louder here in the World Edge than it has ever been before. He tries to feel out if there are many presences nearby as he bends over Professor Yoon and turns him over, but his senses are so scrambled he can barely even pick up the man in front of him. Professor Yoon has a cut on his forehead that’s bleeding down his face. His eyes are closed.

“Shit,” Chan says, “Professor.”

He doesn’t stir. Chan takes a deep breath, then looks back at the mirror. He can’t see Wonwoo, and he can’t feel Seungcheol anymore, either, nor the unfamiliar part of the presence. There’s just him and the Professor. It’s quiet again, he realizes suddenly. Eerily quiet. He can barely hear any of the waterfalls in the distance.

He struggles to pick Professor Yoon up. He has to crouch down and rest Professor Yoon’s legs over his knees before he can pick up his chest. The dragons’ blood falls to the ground as he gets his arm under the Professor’s legs, and Chan feels like the universe is holding its breath with him as he watches it fall onto the rocks, split open, and burst into flames as the powdered blood shoots everywhere.

It gets on them both. Chan screams as he runs back toward the mirror, half-carrying, half-dragging the Professor with him. He’s not even sure which is burning him—the fire or the blood itself. He throws Professor Yoon through the gate, hoping desperately that he lands in Wonwoo’s arms on the other side. He can’t even conjure water to douse the flames, not with the blood on him. He can’t do anything. He feels sick, so sick, all clammy and heavy like he’s dying. He’s going to die. 

He turns around and lunges for the rest of the package. He stumbles, and feels his left arm crack as he lands hard on the rocks next to the parcel. Pain shoots up his other arm as he reaches into the fire and grabs the dragons’ blood. Crawling back through the mirrors seems like it takes ten years. 

“Chan!” he hears Wonwoo say as soon as he gets his head through. There’s no more squealing mirror. Chan can’t see from how much pain he’s in. He drags his legs in behind him. There’s a great whooshing noise as Wonwoo closes the gateway and the presence still inside— _Seungcheol_ —vanishes. 

Something hot hits his back. Distantly, he registers that it’s wet. Wonwoo must be making it rain.

“What the fuck was that?” Professor Yoon moans weakly. Chan can’t detect where he is. He’s trying so hard to keep his head up, but it feels like all he’s made of is pain and heaviness.

“No idea.” Wonwoo’s voice is fuzzy, slipping in and out around Chan’s ears.

Chan puts his face to the cool floor of the office and lets the darkness flood in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to be continued...


End file.
